The Return
by MarvelGeek
Summary: Sabo wasn't killed that day...Steve Rogers wasn't born to Alain and Steven Sr. Rogers...because Sabo and Steve are one and the same.


'_Now, with this sake, we are brothers_!'

'_Heehee, Ace beat you Sabo_!'

'_Sabo! Don't cry_!'

'_He's not a noble! He's our brother_!'

'_Being lonely is more painful than being hurt!'_

_'Ace! Luffy! We gotta set out to sea someday_! _Let's get out of this country_ _and live freely_!'

Steve jerked awake, gasping as sweat poured down his forehead and into his eyes. He was shaking and whimpering as his body shook with the effort, the super soldier couldn't get their voices out of his head. His brothers, Ace and Luffy, their voices always vibrated through his head when he dreamed. How he missed them.

Steve slid out of his bed and got down on his hands and knees, grasping blindly under his bed to pull out a small cardboard box. It was filled with a pair of googles, a worn out faded blue top hat and a picture that he'd ripped out of his sketch book.

It was a picture of the three of them that he'd drawn its his own hand. Luffy was grinning wildly like he always did and was holding the corners of his beloved straw hat. Ace was flashing his signature peace sign and Steve smiled as he studied the childish freckles on his older brother's face along with the wild black hair falling into his eyes. Then he looked at himself in the picture, his chipped baby tooth obvious in the grin he held and his eyes were closed in glee.

Steve gently set down the picture and he picked up the familiar blue top hat that he had loved so much in his childhood. He pressed the moth-eaten, musty fabric to his nose and breathed in deeply. Even after all these years, the hat still held the same smell of smoke from the Grey Terminal, he guessed it had never truly faded. Then he reached upwards and rested the hat on his head for the first time in over 76 years. The moment the hat was placed on his head, the memories came flooding back.

He remembered being on his ship as it burned, they had shot at him, the Celestial Dragon had shot at him. He'd been terrified as he tried to put out his flaming ship. Then they had shot again and his eyes widened as he watched his ship explode. He was tossed into the water and had sunk instantly. He remembered how the water had flooded into his lungs, making it impossible to breathe, to do pretty much anything. He had been so confused, he knew that he wasn't the best swimmer. But he'd never been this bad.

Then he had been to cry, the salt water from his eyes mixing with the salt water in the East Blue. He had wished with all his might that he was away from there that he was free, as far away as possible. Then he felt a pulling sensation behind his navel and suddenly Sabo was gone.

Alain Rogers found him on the shore of a beach a week later, she became his 'mother' and ended up raising him for six years until she died of pneumonia. That was the first year, at the age of sixteen, that he first tried to in-list in the army. The very thing that he and his brothers had hated as children, the Marines were the same as the army here. He had many years to think about what happened and how he was brought here, until he realized, the day that he threw his body over a grenade.

He had actually been too far away from the grenade to actually throw himself over it that fast. All he did was 'will' himself that he was there and he felt the familiar pull behind his navel again and then he was over the grenade. That's when he realized that he was a Devil Fruit user, he must have eaten the Portal-Portal Fruit one day when he was a child without realizing it. That was also the day he was chosen for the super soldier serum. And the rest is as they say, 'history'.

"Steve! Come on, breakfast is ready, Spangles!"

He heard Tony's voice call him from downstairs and Steve smiled, Tony was a lot like Ace was as a child. They also had similar father situations. Steve gently removed the hat from his head and set it back in its box. Before gently pushing the box back under his bed.

"Come on, Capsicle! We don't have all day for you to drag your Star-Spangled-Butt down here!"

_'Come on, Sabo! Hurry up! Your such a slowpoke, you know that?'_

Steve smiled at the memory of Ace's words and the current ones from Tony. Steve stood up and shoved his way out of the room to clomp down the stairs loudly.

"Hold your horses, Stark! I'm coming!"


End file.
